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From petty crimes such as theft to more serious ones such as those under anti-terrorism laws, the basic method by which police seek the “truth” is by torture. Even despite the fact that confessions are not admissible in law, the police and other agencies resort to torture because it is part of the accepted mode of dealing with crime.
Permissiveness toward torture is related to the political system and the nature of policing under a particular system. For example, in a place like Hong Kong, where it is a matter of policy to maintain a rule-of-law system and control corruption, there is hardly any permissiveness toward the use of torture, although there are infrequent reports of the use of pressure on suspects.
However, in most parts of Asia there are still no decisive methods for the control of corruption. A consequence of this is that the police themselves are very much part of the entrenched system of corruption. Every attempt to modernize the policing system threatens the tolerance of corruption.
For this reason no major efforts are made to modernize the policing systems, which continue to rely on primitive techniques in dealing with crime. The most primitive and culturally entrenched tradition coming down from various types of feudal cultures in Asia is torture.
Educating the police about human rights and giving them technical assistance, as are often done by developed countries, have not proved effective in reforming policing systems and eliminating torture. What is required is a comprehensive study that can reveal the historical development of the policing system in each country and the various reasons for the justification of torture.
Mere legal condemnation of torture, or declarations at international bodies demanding that this practice be abandoned, cannot resolve this issue, which affects ordinary citizens all the time. It must be understood from its roots.
Some of the narratives about the practice of torture are so shocking that in present-day developed democracies they may not even be considered credible. For example, people may not believe that innocent citizens, mostly from poor backgrounds, can be arrested and tortured to force them to confess to crimes they have not committed, simply because the officers are under pressure to produce a substitute criminal for a crime they are unable to solve.
However, extensive documentation by human rights groups has revealed that this type of practice is very common in countries like Bangladesh, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Burma and several other places. The deeper we go into the issue of torture, the more we understand that there are fundamental problems affecting the rule of law as well as democracy in these countries.
The real or imagined need for anti-terrorism laws has had a negative effect on attempts to eliminate torture in the Asian context. The attempt by the United States to relativize the problem of torture has been interpreted by authoritarian regimes in Asia to mean that the old approach -- the absolute prohibition of torture -- is no longer respected by the international community. Thus, wherever there is armed conflict in Asia we find the period of legal detention extended, for the simple purpose of giving the authorities more time to torture people.
The theory of the ticking of the clock – that information must be obtained quickly from suspects to prevent terror plots – has been used to justify the widespread use of torture by intelligence agencies assisting military operations. Thus, the battle for the elimination of torture suffers from legal obstacles as well as a psychological climate that trivializes this principle.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. His blog can be read at http://srilanka-lawlessness.com.)
